Richard Hoffman is author of the poetry collections, Without Paradise, Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award, and Emblem, as well as the short story collection Interference & Other Stories, and the celebrated memoir, Half the House. He teaches at Emerson College, and currently serves as Chair of PEN New England.

„If Anton Chekhov returned as a modern-day poet, Richard Hoffman would be his name. His poems reverberate with the same lucid witness and precision. Bridging histories local and cultural, they draw on literary traditions while simultaneously heralding experiment and invention. Both rooted and transcendent, Emblem is a marvelous new book.” - Terrance Hayes, author of National Book Award winner, Lighthead

Kathleen Aguero’s most recent book of poetry, Daughter Of, is published by Cedar Hill Books. She is also the author of two previous books of poetry, Thirsty Day (Alice James Books) and The Real Weather (Hanging Loose Press). Kathleen has edited three volumes of multicultural literature published by the University of Georgia Press: A Gift of Tongues and An Ear to the Ground (co-edited with Marie Harris), and Daily Fare. She also has an essay in the anthology, Why I’m Still Married. Her work has been published in many literary journals and anthologized in Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology, Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School, Pierced by a Ray of Sun, Peeling the Onion, and City River of Voices. She has been a recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Elgin Cox Foundation, a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Visiting Research Associate at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center.